On August 27, 2024, Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi (right) shook hands with US National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan at Yanqi Lake in Beijing.
Wu Hanyuan | AFP | Getty Images
BEIJING – U.S. President Joe Biden and Chinese President Xi Jinping will have a phone call “in the coming weeks.” The White House said Wednesday.
The news comes as U.S. national security adviser Jake Sullivan travels to Beijing this week to meet with China’s top diplomat Wang Yi.
Both sides said that the military leaders of the two countries will also hold a phone call in the near future.
Chin added that plans for a second round of U.S.-China talks on artificial intelligence are underway. The White House noted that John Podesta, the president’s senior adviser for international climate policy, would visit China soon but did not specify a date.
In the official report from Sullivan’s trip, the two countries maintained their positions on technology restrictions, Taiwan, the South China Sea and Ukraine.
Biden will not run for re-election after this summer and cede the nomination to Vice President Kamala Harris. The White House statement did not mention the president by name but noted plans for a “leadership-level call.”
this Chinese statement According to CNBC’s Chinese translation, the typical language of “the two heads of state” was used and said that the two sides were discussing “a new round of interaction.”
Biden and Xi had a nearly two-hour phone call in early April after meeting in November 2023 on the sidelines of the Woodside Summit in California.
High-level communication between the world’s two largest economies has not been easy in recent years due to rising tensions and Covid-19 restrictions.
Then-U.S. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s trip to Taiwan in August 2022 and the high-profile “balloon incident” in February 2023 further strained relations between the two countries, and some planned talks were forced to be suspended.
U.S. security adviser visits China for first time since 2016
Sullivan arrived in Beijing on Tuesday, concluded a two-day meeting with Wang Yi on Wednesday and is scheduled to depart on Thursday. This is his first visit to China as national security adviser, although Met with Wang many times recent years.
The last official visit to China by the US President’s National Security Advisor was in 2016, when Susan Rice Been to Beijing under the Obama administration.
While the outcome of November’s presidential election remains unclear, taking a tough stance on Beijing is an issue on which the U.S. parties have rare bipartisan agreement.
Phil Gordon, Harris’ current national security adviser, said at a conference in May Council on Foreign Relations Activities “China’s challenge” is much greater than Taiwan’s and calls for ensuring that Beijing “does not have the advanced technological, intelligence and military capabilities to challenge us”.